Daily Record 12th September 2011

Keep it High Brow

By Nan Spowart

lf you’ve ever wondered how celebs get their perfect eyebrows, the secret is out. All you need is a treatment called High Definition Brows. It’s the Hollywood option for brows and is now available at Zen Lifestyle’s three Edinburgh salons, including a new, state-of-the-art branch in Hanover Street. Zen first introduced HD Brows around a year ago and the treatment is so popular that other salons are starting to follow suit. Hollyoaks actresses such as Jennifer Metcalfe, Claire Cooper and Leah Hackett are devotees, along with models Bianca Gascoigne and Emma B.

As my eyebrows are naturally fair and hard to see, l thought I would give it a try as well-defined brows can make all the difference to how we look. According to Zen beauty therapist Maxine Brooks, HD Brows can open up the eyes and even knock years off you. However, the perfect arch takes skill and precision – as anyone who has ever suffered a botched waxing knows- so after tinting my brows, Maxine measured out how they should look using the bridge of my nose and outer eye as a guide. She then drew in lines to give the ideal shape and carefully threaded and waxed around them.

“HD can take a few treatments to get the perfect shape, especially if they are over plucked,” she explained. However, as I have always left my brows fairly thick to compensate for their colour, she was able to create near-perfect arches on the very first go. The result was very impressive, although initially a little dark for my very fair skin. But the tint fades in the first few days so it’s best to have them a shade or two darker to begin with. And I can truthfully say that in all my painful years of plucking, waxing and threading, I have never left with such perfectly shaped eyebrows. I don’t know if Maxine is unusually gentle but it wasn’t sore either. But the last words must to my hyper-critical teenage daughter, who took one look at me and said: “l want two of those.”